Zak Belica

Zak Belica was born in the bombastic borough of the Bronx, NY, to the sound of sirens & garbage trucks. Many years later, he still enjoys noise.

Although he soon moved out of the Bronx to more suburban climes, the action of the city still appealed to him. And in the late seventies, he found a great source of action, and that was video games. His first computer was a Commodore64, and that got him hooked on computers & music.

In Boston, Zak's official cover said that he was attending Boston University. What he actually ended up doing was tooling away on computer music, forming punk-rock/industrial/ska bands with his roommates, and engaging in general non-educational debauchery. After his truncated stint at BU, he ended up working as a software tester for Spinnaker Software (makers of the PFS: Blunder line) and continuing his musical noisings at night. A few bad Boston winters later, he decided to look for a more temperate clime. His girlfriend suggested Seattle, and they moved there in '94. Zak made an initial contact there with a company called CineVox that did music and sound for commercials and movies. They liked what he was doing with music & sound, but they said it was way too scary, and that if he could his powers for good, not evil, he might be able to work for them.

To pay the bills, Zak got a job at (surprise) Microsoft as a contract test engineer. At night, he worked away at music and sound jobs for CineVox, building his chops up to a pro level. After a few months, he was able to work full-time for CineVox, and became the house engineer, editor, and sound designer. His duties expanded to music composition a few months later, and he worked at this task until CineVox closed its doors a few years later.

After composing music and designing sound for advertising clients like Nike, Boeing, and Microsoft and working on several movie trailers and soundtracks, he was ready for a big project. Fortunately, his first game project, Sin, came along!